Posts Tagged ‘Children’

We got the news today that, at lunch time New Zealand time, gun men shot the worshippers at two mosques over there, killing men, women and children. There are 49 dead, and many more wounded. Two men and a woman have been arrested. One of them is an Australian White supremacist. It’s particularly shocking as I understand that, while New Zealand has its problems with violent crime same as everywhere else, it’s largely quiet and peaceful compared with some other nations. I can remember talking to an elderly gentleman in my part of south Bristol, who was preparing to leave to join relatives out there. He said he was impressed with the humanity of the place. It’s still a country where neighbours greet and talk to each other, And now sadly racist, islamophobic violence has hit that nation too.

The good fellow at Crewe, who posts the Zelo Street blog, has put up a really good piece not only condemning the violence, and putting it in the context of the other massacres caused by Fascist maniacs – Anders Breivik at Utoya, the rabid anti-Semite who attacked the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, and the other bigots and racists who gun down and murder Jews, Muslims and gays, including children. He also points the finger at those, whose own politics and rhetoric of hate have helped to inspire such atrocities: the right-wing press. He makes the point that this hate long ago went beyond the extreme right-wing fringe, and discusses the extreme right-wing figures, from Donald Trump, Milo Yiannopolis and the Alt Right, to Tories like Boris Johnson. All of whom will claim that their venomous hatred of Muslims and minorities had nothing to do with these outrages. And he says very strongly that none of them can escape their responsibility for these events. He writes

It is an industry that does not exist in a vacuum: as with any malignant virus, once incubated, it has to spread if it is to have any effect. And here, our free and fearless press, and even our broadcast media, should hang their heads in shame, although they will not. They have published the hate merchants, given platforms to bigots, encouraged the demonisation of minorities, all for the momentary interest of profit and ratings.

Moreover, it is not just fringe media that has spread the virus of hatred. It long ago went beyond Breitbart, InfoWars and Rush Limbaugh. Now it has been transmitted by Fox News Channel, the Murdoch Sun, the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, the Express, the Spectator and others. Yet the management of those media outlets are not responsible for the end product of the hatred they enable. Nor are the figureheads of the hate movement.

Well, I have news for this collective stain on humanity, this repellent convocation of amateur human beings, this vicious cohort of hate preachers. Don’t think any or all of you can duck responsibility for what happened in Christchurch. You cannot. This is where your ignorance, hatred and bigotry leads. This is the fruit of your ill thought out labours.

Damn you. Damn every last miserable, hate-filled, bigoted, snivelling, cowardly, intolerant, selfish, worthless, uncaring one of you. Damn you all to hell.

Dick Coughlan is an anti-racist, anti-Fascist atheist ranter on YouTube. I don’t agree with his atheism, which is in any case only really evident in this video in his sign off: ‘May God be less’. But I’m putting up these two videos because they show just what an amoral, lying thug Tommy Robinson is. Robinson’s one of the leading islamophobes in this country. He’s been the head of the English Defence League, was briefly involved in Pegida UK, and has been in and out of jail for contempt of court. He was caught livestreaming outside the courtroom where Asian men accused of forming grooming and rape gangs were being tried, thus threatening to prejudice their trial. Although he claims to be a racist, he was a member of the BNP. In one video he sent to one of his friends, which was leaked to the press, he contradicted his claim not to be racially prejudiced by referring to an Asian taxi driver as ‘a little Paki’, and compounded it by boasting about how he’d obtained cocaine in every country in the world, including Qatar, when the local Muslims were at prayer.

He claims to be the victim of persecution by the British establishment, but his own conduct and those of his legions of followers is highly intimidating. He turns up with his goons at his critics’ homes announced and demands to talk to them in a very aggressive manner. He also doxes them, revealing their personal information on the net, leaving them vulnerable to hate messages and death threats from his fans. He did this a few weeks ago to a critic in his home town of Luton. The lad’s parents live in Cumbria, so he and two of his friends drove up there in the middle of the night to intimidate them. Another opponent is the historian and journalist Mike Stuchbery, who Robinson and his friends also tried to intimidate in the same manner. They turned up at his house, banged on his windows and at one point made the false and malign claim that Stuchbery is a paedophile. For which Stuchbery’s taking him to court.

In the first video below, Coughlan talks about the video Robinson sent, that was leaked to the press. This was done by one of his friends, and Coughlan points out, not unreasonably, that if they’re doing that to Robinson, then clearly they aren’t friends of his. He also discusses how it shows Robinson to be a racist and druggie, despite his denials. But he really attacks Robinson for his comments about a rape charity, which was offering special services to Black and ethnic minority women. Robinson took a photo of their advert with the caption ‘So it’s OK to rape White women then?’ This was very definitely not what the charity was saying. The advert was for a branch of rape charity, that existed to help all women, regardless of their colour. It was offering special services – such as contact with staff that spoke Asian and other minority languages, for example, because the women in these communities may be at a disadvantage because of their unique needs. At the same time, the charity certainly was not going to turn away White women. This is clearly shown in the flyer for the charity, which shows four White faces amongst the Black and Asian women. Robinson was aware of this, and how it would contradict his lying caption, and so deliberately shot the flyer at an angle so that the four White faces wouldn’t show. Robinson’s lies resulted in the charity having their phone lines clogged with hate calls. They will have to change their posters, leaflets and have new lines installed because of Robinson’s accusation. As a result, God knows how many women have not been able to get the advice and help they need.

Equally disgusting was a lie Robinson tweeted about a rape that was supposed to have occurred in a school in Luton. An eleven year old White girl was supposed to have been gang-raped by Muslims. Robinson tweeted this, with a comment asking why the authorities were silent.

They were silent for a good reason: it never happened.

Nevertheless, the outrage Robinson generated with his wretched tweet was so intense and widespread that the school, Luton council and police had to go to the press and on television and radio to refute the lie.

In the second video, he talks about his personal experience of dealing with Robinson and his internet squadristi. It’s title refers to Robinson’s real name, Stephen Yaxley Lennon. And it’s a scream of rage and defiance against their doxing and threats. Robinson is being sued for defamation by a young Syrian lad, who was attacked at his school by a bully. The lad, a refugee, was a victim of racial assault, but Robinson instead sympathised with the bully and his family, who, he claimed, were the real victims. Coughlan was contacted by the lad’s solicitors, who asked him to serve the legal papers on Robinson.

Coughlan describes this process, taking care to refute the lies posted about him by the Robinson and his supporters. According to them, Coughlan turned up with other men in black balaclavas to terrify and intimidate Robinson’s wife and children. Coughlan admits that he did have company, as he isn’t a tough man and didn’t know what to expect. He was also accompanied by journalists, one from the Daily Mail and another from Channel 4. But they very definitely didn’t wear black balaclavas and didn’t try to threaten or intimidate Robinson’s wife and children. He states he went to Robinson’s wife’s house, as although it’s in her name, he is registered as living there. He has to do this, as Robinson is prevented from touching mortgages due to a conviction for mortgage fraud. When he got there, Coughlan was met by a couple of coppers, who took the writ from him, and said they would deliver it to Robinson instead.

Coughlan then goes on to describe the personal attacks, so far mercifully not physical, he has received from Robinson and his supporters. They have released details of where he lives online, and revealed that Coughlan formerly used cocaine. Which Coughlan finds absolutely hysterical, as he has put all this information out there. However, they got a photograph of where they thought he lives absolutely wrong, and Coughlan corrects them. They have also gone through all his tweets and videos trying to find anything that makes him look a Nazi. This includes a video of Coughlan in his bedsit, with a picture tacked to the wall, which is supposed to be a swastika. As Coughlan shows, it isn’t. It’s a caricature he drew of Rees-Mogg. And some of those claiming that Coughlan is somehow himself racist clearly have far right views themselves. One even announces that he works for the far-right news corporation, Breitbart.

Coughlan isn’t dismayed by their antics, as despite the personal insults and threats to kill him and burn down his house, nothing’s happened. In fact, it’s only made him more determined to combat Robinson further. He states that he’ll contact Mike Stuchbery about his decision to sue Robinson, as he wants to deliver that writ as well. Just as wants to serve the legal papers to the great anti-Muslim gruppenfuehrer from anyone else determined to sue him. The war has only just begun.

I’m posting both of these up because, although I’ve put up other videos about some of the same events by Kevin Logan and Mike Stuchbery, these confirm what a thoroughly nasty piece of work Robinson is. He isn’t persecuted, he’s one of the persecutors. And it shows just how paranoid and nasty he and his supporters are that they attack to a charity looking after women, who have suffered such dreadful assault. I also admire Coughlan, and the others, who have been threatened by him and his mob, like the good blogger over at Zelo Street, who are standing up to him and bringing the war back to them. Many of us would be too afraid to respond like that in the face of such threats, but Coughlan and co. stand tall and unbowed. I wish them all the best of luck in their campaigns against Robinson and his mob of rabid Fascists, and hope they take them down. From Coughlan’s videos, it should be spectacular.

One warning to everyone viewing: Coughlan’s a sweary bloke with a rather coarse sense of humour, so be careful where you play this.

I’ve found an interesting video on YouTube of Jackie Walker talking to the members of Jewish Antifa Berlin. It’s nearly an hour long, so I haven’t watched all of it. But what I have seen has been very insightful.

Walker is, as you know, a Jewish Black historian and anti-racism activist. She was the vice-chair of Momentum until she was smeared as an anti-Semite by the libelous scumbags of the JLM and CAA. The real reason she was attacked was her opposition to Zionism and Israel’s horrendous persecution of the Palestinians. The video is interesting as clearly Jewish Antifa Berlin are definitely not going to tolerate even remotely a genuine Nazi. Not with their and their parents’ and grandparents’ experience of Nazi persecution and the Holocaust. Hosting the event is a young woman, who begins by asking some questions herself and then opening it out to the audience. She begins by asking Walker about some of the groups now declaring their opposition to anti-Semitism. Such as the various right-wing parties and organisations, including the Daily Mail. The mention of the Heil brings a snort from someone in the audience, so even over in Merkel’s Bundesrepublik the Heil is notorious for its racism and bigotry. Walker in her response states that the Right is keen to attack anti-Semitism because it shows they are anti-racist, without actually doing something about those, who are genuinely underprivileged and under-represented. This does not, however, mean that anti-Semitism doesn’t exist. They also talk about the really horrifically anti-Semitic parties and regimes that have arisen in eastern Europe, whose heads then go off to Israel and meet Netanyahu.

This is a good point. There is, unfortunately, still anti-Semitism in Britain. But Tony Greenstein has pointed out time and again that as a group, Jews are not persecuted and not marginalised. Sociologically they are comfortably upper middle class. They don’t suffer the prejudice and discrimination like Blacks or Muslims. None of Britain’s Jews has been seized and forcibly deported, for example, like the Windrush migrants and their children. And for that matter, they don’t have to suffer Rod Liddle proclaiming that the Tory party needs to be more intolerant of them, as Muslims have had. And so the Tories and the Tory press can proclaim their opposition to anti-Semitism because it costs them absolutely nothing. While underneath, as we have seen, there’s a seething mass of venomous, Nazi hatred, including anti-Semitism and its conspiracy theories about the Jews plotting the destruction of the White race.

Watching anything Walker says, it’s very clear that the Israel lobby and the Labour right had good reason to fear her. She’s very sharp, with a clear grasp of the issues involved and an ability to communicate it easily to an audience. It’s a video that I will have to watch in full, and then post on.

The Nye Bevan News blog reported yesterday that Blairite Labour MP Siobhain Mcdonagh had appeared on Radio 4 that morning, 4th March 2019, and told presenter John Humphreys that the anti-capitalists in the Labour party were anti-Semitic. Humphrey had asked her if the party was taking anti-Semitism seriously. She replied

I’m not sure that some people in the Labour party can, because it’s very much part of their politics – of hard left politics – to be against capitalists, and to see Jewish people as the financers of capital.

Humphreys then asked her if you had to be anti-Semitic to be anti-capitalist. She replied

Yes. Not everybody, but absolutely, there’s a certain strand of it and these people are not Labour, have never been Labour but we now find them in our party.

Humphreys then asked her if they didn’t become Labour when they joined the party. To which she gave the following answer

Not as far as I see it. I believe that the Labour party has a very strong set of values related to how we see society should be run and about being anti-racist, which they cannot be part of.

The MP went on talk about Jenny Formby not releasing the figures for anti-Semitic incidents in the Labour party, although the Nye Bevan News blog notes that Formby had actually done so some time ago. She also criticised Formby for saying she reported to the NEC, not Labour MPs, and praised Tom Watson for wanting to interfere with the process, despite them being against data protection rules.

The article concluded:

It is clearly very problematic and actually borders upon anti-semitism in itself to immediately make the association between Jewish people and banking/financing – repeating an anti-semitic trope on national radio is appalling.

Martin Odoni, a Jewish Labour party member and dedicated anti-racist, is in absolutely no doubt that Mcdonagh’s comments were anti-Semitic. He posted a template email on his website requesting Jenny Formby suspend Mcdonagh pending a full investigation. He points out that not only would many Jews find the implication of her claim that anti-capitalism is anti-Semitic, that Jews are therefore bourgois and capitalistic, not just offensive but also anti-Semitic under the I.H.R.A. definition of anti-Semitism that the party has adopted. She is also to be suspended because her endorsement of Watson’s demands to see personal information in order to interfere in anti-Semitism cases, which contravenes data protection laws, is therefore solicitation to commit a criminal act.

Now it’s true that you can find examples of disgusting anti-Semitism in the views of leading socialists, communists and anarchists from Marx onwards. But the view that Jews equal capitalism, and particularly financial capitalism isn’t the view of socialists and anti-capitalists, but that of fascists and Nazis. The ideology George Orwell described as ‘the socialism of fools’. But the smear that socialism and anti-capitalism is innately anti-Semitic is that of the transatlantic extreme right in books such as Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism. It is also being pushed by the Republicans in America and the Tories over here as a means of defending the super-rich one per cent from criticism. This is the section of predominantly western society that own capital and industry, and who demand the policies of privatisation, welfare cuts, job insecurity and the reduction of the tax burden on them that are causing so much misery and poverty across the world. But for the right, criticism of the one per cent is absolutely forbidden. It’s anti-Semitic, you see, because of the way the Nazis equated the Jews with the rich and finance capitalism. But when socialists, communists, anarchists and other anti-capitalists, as well as genuine liberals, talk about the 1 per cent and their destructive policies, they mean the global elite regardless of colour, race or religious affiliation. They do not mean ‘Jews’.

It’s the same tactics the right used to try to defend bankers from criticism a few years ago, when they were all giving themselves massive bonuses after the crash at the expense of the rest of us, who had to bail them out. They used the same tactic, saying that if you were criticising the bankers and demanding their punishment, you were a Nazi. Because Jews equal bankers to anti-Semites. But again, only Nazis and Fascists equate Jews with banking, and the left-wingers demanding punishment for bankers were demanding it for those, who had caused the crash, regardless of their race or religion.

Mcdonagh is clearly, at heart, a Red Tory, who has taken over these views, and is desperately keen to preserve the present, corrupt system and its enrichment of the few at the cost of the impoverishment of the many.

She’s also at the same time pushing the lie that Blair and his followers represent the real Labour party and those further to the left are communist or Trotskyite entryists. But it was Blair, who was the real entryist. He was a Thatcherite, who removed Labour’s commitment to socialism and was determined to follow Thatcher’s agenda of privatisation, destruction of the welfare state and creating a fluid Labour market. Which meant creating job insecurity. Traditional Labour party members, who wanted a genuinely mixed economy, we forced out of positions of leadership in the party. Many ordinary members left. Corbyn, with his policies of nationalising the utilities, renationalising the NHS, restoring trade union power and extending workers’ rights, represents solid traditional Labour party values. They values and policies that gave us thirty years of growth and prosperity after the War.

And then there’s her views of Labour party anti-racism. Well, Tony Benn was genuinely one of the most anti-racist MPs, giving his wholehearted support to the boycott of Bristol Bus Company by Black Bristolians because of its refusal to employ non-Whites. And he was a staunch advocate of a mixed economy, industrial democracy, trade unions and everything that Mcdonagh, as a Blairite, fears and despises. As is Ken Livingstone, whose leadership of the GLC was reviled and hated by the Tories as a centre of ‘political correctness’. The campaign against racism by Labour party members began long before Blair took over.

And as for the Blairites’ own attitudes towards racism, Tony Greenstein has pointed out their hypocrisy in a post on his blog this morning. He contrasted Watson’s and the others’ screams about supposed anti-Semitism with their total indifference over May’s victimisation of immigrants and the deportation of the Windrush migrants and their children.

As a Blairite, Mcdonagh is just another disloyal intriguer smearing those who really stand for traditional Labour values and real anti-racism – not just against the hatred and persecution of Jews, but also against that of Blacks, Asians and particularly Muslims. Her claim that anti-capitalism is identical with anti-Semitism is nothing but an attempt to defend the exploitative rich against those who want real change. She should apologise immediately, or reconsider her position in the party.

This is a very interesting video of just under five minutes long, posted by the Last American Vagabond yesterday, 4th March 2019. It’s an excerpt from a much longer piece, but it reports that Jeremy Corbyn has called for Britain to condemn and stop arms sales to Israel after the publication a few days ago of a UN Report describing Israeli war crimes against Palestinian civilians.

The Vagabond was obviously talking in his longer broadcast about American intervention in Syria, as he begins this segment by saying that America is in Syria to protect Israel. And the double-standards in this is shown by a story in Anti-Media reporting that Corbyn called for the UK to condemn Israel’s killing of Palestinians. The Vagabond states that they all know the stories of Corbyn being called an anti-Semite because he calls out Israel’s crimes. This is breaking through, but he’ll still be called an anti-Semite. That’s their plan to diminish the efforts of people, who point out the crimes they’re committing. You’re and anti-Semite if you point out the crimes of Israel, just as if you call out America in Syria, you’re anti-Christian. This doesn’t work.

But this is important. This has been growing. And he’s using the recent UN report to say that we all can see what’s happening, they need to be condemned for their actions. Corbyn is calling for the British government to condemn Israel’s killing of Palestinians, and freeze arms sales to the occupation state. Nothing about Jewish people, nothing about anti-Semitism, just saying that the Israeli government is killing these people, which is very easy to see. The UN report said the Israelis are intentionally killing children and journalists. And because of this we need to freeze arms sales. But people don’t want this to be the case, as Israel is very powerful and has influence in all of these government.

Corbyn’s remarks came in the wake of the UN Report, the funny thing of which was, and they did this more than once, says that Israel might have committed war crimes, while presenting the evidence of all the children, women and doctors they’ve killed. Which shows the absurd nature of the United Nations and its ruling factions. But it’s another opportunity to get this out to people, who’ve never seen it before, who don’t realise that the Israelis are killing children and journalists. Corbyn is now jumping on this to make what should happen, happen, that the international community should have the courage to say ‘You guys are a criminal organisation, your government organisation, not the entirety of Israel but what this government is doing, is very bad.’ And when you realise that they are allowed to get away with this stuff to a certain degree, it gives smaller nations, that really do want to carry this out, not necessarily the power, the drive to do so. Because Israel can get away with it, and shows them the line they can use to get away with it, say Iran’s there, say they’re all terrorists, same with what the US is doing.

He then quotes a tweet from Corbyn, which said

Israel’s killing of demonstrators in Gaza, including children, paramedics and journalists, may constitute war crimes against humanity. The UK government must unequivocally condemn the killing and freeze arms sales to Israel.

The UN report published earlier this week said

The Israeli security forces killed and maimed Palestinian demonstrators who did not pose an eminent threat of death or serious injury to others when they were shot. Nor were they directly participating in hostilities. And the protest had been predominantly civilian in nature.

He says it’s on record that thousands and thousands of people have been shot in the nine months, unarmed, verified – that’s a crime. And it’s time they paid for it and were held accountable.

This is why the Blairites, the Israel lobby and the British establishment are so determined to destroy Corbyn and have him and his supporters purged from the Labour party. Why they smear decent, anti-racist people like Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Ken Livingstone, Marc Wadsworth, Mike, Martin Odoni and so many, many others as anti-Semites. It’s because Corbyn stands up for the Palestinians against Israeli racism and colonialism. Because Corbyn’s supporters call out the neo-Conservative lies, distortions and the selective editing of history to try to justify the Israeli state’s crimes against humanity. Just like they call out racism and injustice at home, like the Tories’ targeting of immigrants and folk of colour for vilification and deportation.

Now the departure of the eight quitters from the Labour party last week, and the manufactured outrage against Chris Williamson for daring to book a room to show the film Witchhunt, about the anti-Semitism smear campaign in the Labour party, makes me wonder if the Israelis knew the report was coming out, and so mobilised their puppets in readiness. Because of the eight splitters, six were members of Labour Friends of Israel. Joan Ryan was its chair, and as she was filmed saying by al-Jazeera, she obtained a million pounds worth of funding from the Israelis and most days met Shai Masot, the Israeli embassy official, who conspired to have Alan Duncan removed from the cabinet. And the Independent group is a private corporation, precisely so they don’t have to disclose their funding. Which seems to me will almost certainly include money from the Israelis.

Here’s another reason why no-one should give their trust or their votes to the Independent Grouping. Apart from the fact that they’re deadbeat Blairites and Tories, who stand for privatisation, including that of the NHS, the destruction of the welfare state, tuition fees, shifting the tax burden to the poor away from the rich, and supporting Theresa May with a confidence and supply motion in order to stop Labour gaining power. Margaret Hodge, one of the most vociferous of the Blairites smearing her Corbyn supporters as anti-Semites has shown that she will try and ignore and play down accusations of child abuse in areas under her authority.

In 2003 a scandal broke out about Hodge’s suitability to sit in Blair’s cabinet. Liz Davies, a social worker, had uncovered incidents of child abuse in Islington council’s care homes, when she was leader of the council. Hodge had first tried to cover it up, claiming that children in care homes were ‘disruptive’. She had also insulted one of the former inmates who had come forward to tell of his experience of abuse, Demetrios Panton. Panton was now an adult, and Hodge apologised to him for her abuse. Nevertheless, in the Davies’ eyes, this still meant that she was totally unsuited for serving as Children’s Minister in Blair’s government.

I found this recording of an interview Davies gave on The World Tonight in 2003, posted up by Desiring Progress on YouTube in 2013. I haven’t heard all of it, but in what I have heard, Davies makes her views of this whole sordid business and Hodge’s attempts to stop news of the abuse coming out very clear, and she demands Hodge’s resignation.

Hodge is a massive liar when it comes to accusations of anti-Semitism. The programme’s host states that she was supposed to be a good children’s minister under Blair. However, from this it’s clear that Hodge’s first response to accusations and reports of child abuse in organisations for which she is responsible has not been to believe and protect the children, but to try to protect herself and cover it up. No doubt if something like that happened again now, she accused the whistleblower of anti-Semitism to try to make them look guilty, rather than herself.

She is a liar, a slanderer, and an opponent of those genuinely concerned with the protection and welfare of vulnerable children, an attitude made worse by her group’s absolute contempt for democracy. We need to have bye-elections now, and get her out of parliament.

Here’s another excellent piece from Labour Against the Witchhunt, where the respected left-wing film-maker, Ken Loach, talks about the case of Kevin Higgins. Higgins is a writer and poet, an overseas member of the party, living in Ireland. He was suspended in June 2016 for daring to write a poem satirising Tony Blair and the bloody carnage he had caused in Iraq. Loach only reads a part of a poem, as it’s rather too long to repeat in full. Before he does he jokes that as this is what got Higgins suspended, then everyone present is also going to be suspended simply for being there. So anyone who doesn’t want to be suspended should leave.

The poem is a reworking of a piece by Brecht, about a soldier, who gets shot, and his needy widow receives only something insignificant. In the part Loach reads, which I’m paraphrasing, not quoting, Blair’s ‘no longer new’ wife wonders about what she will receive from all the depleted uranium shells he had dropped during the battle of Basra, all the soldiers he had sent to meet Improvised Explosive Devices in far Mesopotamia? She got for all that white night terrors of him on trial for his crimes and the desire never again to look out the window of their fine Connaught Square House at the tree, which people said was once used to hang traitors.

Loach says of Higgins that he guesses Higgins isn’t the only one who’s disgusted with Blair, with his illegality, the hundreds of thousands he caused to die and the millions he’s made since he left office. ‘If anyone brings the party into disrepute, it’s that mass murderer.’

He goes on then to reveal what happened to Higgins himself. He didn’t hear anything, so in May 2017 he wrote to the Governance and Legal Unit requesting all the documents relating to him to be sent to him within forty according to his right in the laws about data protection. Nine months later, no reply. The video was uploaded on YouTube on 7th February 2018. He was still suspended, as far as Loach knew.

The cineaste concludes

It is incompetent. It is inefficient. It is unprincipled. And those people should not be in charge of that disclipinary procedure.

Loach is absolutely correct. And Higgins’ suspension, simply for satirising Blair, isn’t the mark of a democratic socialist party. It’s the action of a rigidly centralised dictatorship, where the leader was, like Mussolini, always right. It’s like nothing so much as Stalin’s ‘cult of personality’ in the USSR, with the exception that Higgins only got suspended. In Stalin’s USSR, he’d have been tortured and shot, or at the very least sent to a gulag.

And Loach is definitely correct when he says that he probably isn’t the only one disgusted with Blair. Millions of us are. Over a million people marched against the Iraq invasion, including the priests at my local church. It was one of the biggest popular demonstrations in British history, but Blair and his vile cronies ignored it. And people certainly left the party and refused to vote for the grotty profiteer because of his greed, his illegality, his warmongering, his privatisation, his insistence on absolute obedience and micromanagement of party affairs. Private Eye called him the ‘Dear Leader’, satirising the smaltzy, sentimental image he tried to project, as well as his demand to be loved. The Tory party at the time stood in opposition to the War, which got a left-wing friend of mine to buy the Spectator for a time. I think that this was mostly opportunism on the Tories’ party, as there is nothing they love better than a good war. But to be fair to them, Peter Hitchens, the brother of the late atheist polemicist Christopher, genuinely despised him for Iraq and continues to loathe him, describing him as ‘the Blair creature’.

And this monster seems intent on coming back into politics. He has praised the Independent Group, which led Mike, Martin Odoni and others to ask why he should still be allowed to remain in the Labour party. It is against the rules to be a member or support a rival organisation. This was the rule the Blairites used to throw out Moshe Machover, the Israeli academic and anti-Zionist. His crime was that he had a piece published in the Morning Star, as have very many leaders and MPs over the years. Professor Machover was grudgingly readmitted to the party after a massive outcry. But Blair gives them his support, and no-one important seems to raise any objections whatsoever. The left-wing vlogger, Gordon Dimmack, says he has heard speculation that if the wretched group survives, then before long Blair will return to active politics. It’s an idea that he says gave him nightmares.

Unfortunately, I think it’s a distinct possibility. Despite the fact that his time as this country’s leader has been and gone, he was on Andrew Marr’s wretched propaganda show today. I’m glad I missed it, as it would only have infuriated me. But it does seem to bear out these rumours.

One million men, women and children killed. Seven million displaced all across the Middle East. A secular state with free healthcare and education destroyed and looted. A state where women were free to have their own careers and run businesses. Where there were no ‘peace barriers’ between Shi’a and Sunni quarters in cities to stop them murdering each other. A country whose oil reserves have been looted by the American and Saudi oil companies, and whose state industries were plundered by American multinationals.

And this creature appears on TV again, to grin his sickly smile and utter neoliberal platitudes and smooth words. But hey, you can’t criticise him, because he stands for inclusion and diversity. While parents starve themselves to feed their children, students are faced with unaffordable tuition fees and the disabled are thrown off benefits thanks to the wretched assessments and work capable tests he, Mandelson and the others in his coterie introduced.

Higgins’ poem reminds me about one of the great protest poems written back in the ’60s about another unjust war, Vietnam. This was To Whom It May Concern (Tell Me Lies About Vietnam) by Adrian Mitchell, where every stanza ended ‘Tell me lies about Vietnam’. The note about it in Colin Firth’s and Anthony Arnove’s The People Speak: Democracy Is Not A Spectator Sport states that he added stanzas later to include more leaders and more wars.

So perhaps if Blair comes back to politics we should write another: ‘Tell Me Lies About Iraq’.

This is another video, which I’ve just put up on my channel on YouTube. It’s about the Nazi concentration camp badge for the voluntary unemployed, which I made with cardboard and a safety pin the other day. I posted up a piece then explaining the concentration camp system of badges, and why I was making it: it’s a protest against the appalling poverty caused by the DWP’s wretched system of benefit sanctions and Universal Credit.

Here’s the blurb I put up for the piece on YouTube

Other groups apart from Jews and gays were made to wear identifying badges in the Nazi camps. ‘Asocial’ people – beggars, vagrants, prostitutes, pacifists and conscription-evaders were forced to wear a black triangle with an ‘A’ for ‘Arbeitscheu’ or ‘workshy’. This also included the voluntary unemployed. The Nazi punishment of the unemployed compares to their treatment now under the DWP’s benefits regime, which denies them money on the flimsiest of pretexts, such as missing an appointment because they were in hospital. At the same time Universal Credit and the delays built into the system are also forcing people into starvation and food banks.

I explain how the Tory policy of depriving people, who make themselves voluntarily unemployed, which came in under John Major, was a Nazi policy, and that along with the above groups Gypsies were also sent to the camps. I state that while it would be a case of Godwin’s Law to claim that the Tories were treated the unemployed like the Nazis – they aren’t rounding people up into concentration camps yet, nevertheless it is forcing people into grinding poverty. I also point out how parents are being forced to steal food from supermarkets, and are starving themselves to feed their children.

I show how the badge is just cardboard with a safety pin, and explain how I made it as my gesture against the DWP. I’d like it to become a mass movement, of course, with others using it to show their disgust at the DWP, but somehow I don’t think it will.

This is a video I’ve just uploaded to my YouTube channel attacking the suspension of Chris Williamson and the anti-Semitism smears against Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters in the Labour Party by the Blairites, and the political and media establishment.

Here’s the blurb I’ve put up for it:

In this video I attack the campaign of lies and smears against Chris Williamson, Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters in the Labour party. They are not Trotskyites, Communists or anti-Semites, as alleged, but members and supporters who believe in its traditional policies and values before Blair and his Thatcherite ‘modernisation’. Many are also smeared because they believe in Palestinian rights against the brutality of the Israeli state. So there is a campaign by the Israel lobby of smearing them as anti-Semites. Those accused and suspended have been decent, anti-racist non-Jewish people like Williamson and Marc Wadsworth, and self-respecting Torah-observant and secular Jews, like Jackie Walker.

I state that Williamson was right when he said that Labour was the most anti-racist party, and that they had given too much ground to claims of anti-Semitism. Because in many cases they weren’t real claims, but smears. Labour is now the biggest Socialist party with a membership of 500,000, far larger than the Tories. And that frightens Labour’s opponents. These include the Blairites in the Labour party and the Israel lobby. The Blairites fear Corbyn and his supporters because they, the Blairites, stand for Thatcherism – privatisation, including that of the NHS, and the destruction of the welfare state. This has led to mass poverty, a quarter of a million people using food banks, 3.5 million children in poverty, mass starvation and people stealing food from supermarkets because of problems with Universal Credit. And this is also what the people, who split from Labour, Luciana Berger, Chris Leslie, Ann Coffee, Mike Gapes stand for. The Blairites are not ‘Centrists’ nor Social Democrats.

Corbyn’s supporters, on the other hand, have been smeared as Trotksyites and Communists. They are neither. Corbyn’s policies are actually closer to the Social Democratic politics of the 1970s as set down by Anthony Crossland. These were the nationalisation of the utilities, strong trade unions, progressive taxation and social mobility. He believed these would bring the benefits of nationalisation without having to go beyond the nationalisation of the utilities or bring about industrial democracy. The Labour manifesto demands the nationalisation of the rail and water industries, strong trade unions and workers’ rights. It also wants working people and employees on company boards. Which is more radical than historical Social Democracy, but not that much more extreme, as the Labour left were considering it in the 1970s.

The Israel lobby and the Jewish establishment are also keen to attack Corbyn and his supporters because they support the Palestinians. But this does not mean hatred for Israel or the Jewish people. It’s the Israeli state which makes people believe it does. And Corbyn has the support of many Jews – Jewish voice for Labour, for example, and spent the Passover Seder with the Socialist Jews of Jewdas. But these are the wrong type of Jews – Jewish socialists. The type of Jews, who, at the beginning of the last century, the right of the Tory party and groups like the British Brothers’ League were telling people were a threat, because they were going to bring with them Communism, Socialism, Anarchism, and throw millions out of work. And the newspapers now repeating this today, like the Daily Mail, were responsible for these smears then. Lord Rothermere was a fan of Hitler.

I point out how false these claims are with the example of Jackie Walker and Marc Wadsworth. Walker’s a proud lady of colour, whose mother was a Black American civil rights worker with some Jewish blood, and her father was a Russian Jew. And Russian Jews know about anti-Semitism – Russia is the only country where you can buy the vile Protocols of the Elders of Zion on street kiosks. But she’s been smeared as an anti-Semite. As have so many other secular and Torah-observant Jews, some of who are the children of Holocaust survivors, or lost family in the Holocaust.

Then there’s Marc Wadsworth, who was smeared because he embarrassed Ruth Smeeth. They tried to smear him as an anti-Semite, because that’s how the press told it. But he wasn’t. Wadsworth’s a Black anti-racism campaigner, who worked with the Board of Deputies of British Jews in the 1990s to frame stronger legislation against anti-Semitism when the BNP were beating Jews up around the Isle of Dogs. When the anti-Semitism accusation wouldn’t stick, they changed it to ‘bringing the Labour party into disrepute’. But he hadn’t. It was Smeeth, who had brought the Labour party into disrepute with her false accusations.

As you can see, this is quite an angry, impassioned piece. But this is a glaring injustice that infuriates me. I want this witchhunt, which I compare to that of 17th century Salem or McCarthyism, as Jackie Walker has said, to end.

If this is true, then it’s frightening. It’s another step closer to midnight for the nuclear clock.

In this video from the David Pakman Show, posted yesterday, 20th February 2019, Pakman and his producer, Patrick, report that whistleblowers have gone to the House Oversight Committee, which oversees the ethical conduct of the American government, with evidence that Trump has been transferring nuclear secrets to Saudi Arabia. This has been going on as recently as last week. And it’s not simply hearsay either. They have named the corporations allegedly involved, one of which is IP3. If true, Trump’s actions are possibly illegal. Under the Atomic Act, the president must have the consent of Congress before passing on information which could lead to the construction of a nuclear weapon to a foreign power.

Pakman states that this might make sense of some of the other contacts the Trump administration has had with the Saudis. For example, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, had made numerous trips there, which may also be connected. Also Michael Flynn, Trump’s former security adviser, now convicted, also made frequent trips there, some of which were not declared, and some of them were in connection with IP3, one of the companies involved in the deal.

Pakman and Patrick also discuss the hypocrisy of the Trump administration in this. Trump accused Hillary Clinton of similarly doing a deal with a foreign power passing on uranium in a quid-pro-quo deal, which was utterly unfounded. They also point out that Trump withdrew from the nuclear treaty with Iran because the Iranian government was a viciously repressive Islamic monarchy which despised its own people. But this is also true of Saudi Arabia.

Trump is already suspected of doing some kind of secret deal with Putin and the Russians. But the House Democrats are trying to expand this to cover other countries as well. Pakman speculates that they may soon need yet another special investigator to look into these allegations.

You have to wonder how corrupt Trump can actually get. At the last count, there were 17 separate legal investigations into him. In terms of sheer corruption he makes Richard Nixon look clean, although so far he hasn’t been personally responsible for as much death and suffering across the globe.

Pakman and his producer aren’t quite right when they describe Iran as a monarchy. It isn’t. It’s a theocracy. The absolute head of state is the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. However, it does have a democratic component in an elected presidency, even if the law severely restricts the choice of candidate largely to observant Muslims, if not actual members of the ulema, the Islamic clergy.

However, Iran is in some respects more liberal than the Saudis. In Saudi Arabia, any religion other than Wahhabi Islam is illegal. In Iran, the Dhimmis, meaning those monotheist faiths tolerated by Islam since the Prophet Muhammed – Judaism, Christianity and the ancient religion of Iran, Zoroastrianism – are tolerated. Six seats are reserved for them in the majlis, the Iranian parliament. There has been another crackdown and mass arrests of political dissidents recently, and the regime is extremely repressive. Trade unions are banned, and the conditions in the workers’ camps in the oil industry have been compared to concentration camps. But nevertheless, I got the impression that Iran has a greater degree of personal freedom than Saudi Arabia.

There was justifiable alarm at the possibility that Iran may acquire nuclear weapons a few years ago because their last president, Ahmedinejad, was a millennialist. He believed that the end of the world was nigh, and that the Muslim equivalent of the final war between good and evil, similar to Christian End Times belief, was imminent. Just as others have been similarly alarmed at the Christian millennialism of past Republican American presidents, including Ronald Reagan and George ‘Dubya’ Bush, who also believed that the end of the world was coming, and they had to arm America for final battle with the Antichrist.

I haven’t heard any suggestion that the Saudis are also millennialists waiting for the final battle with the as-Salihi al-Dajjal, the figure in Islam corresponding to the Antichrist in Christianity. But5 they are a brutal, genocidal regime. We’ve seen how the Saudis are deliberately targeting and slaughtering civilians in Yemen, including women and children, simply for being Shi’a. And Shi’a Muslims in Saudi Arabia living in villages without running water or electricity, and are forbidden to practice their religion or possess their holy books. And a few years ago, one of the chief Saudi religious authorities – I don’t know whether it was the Sharif of Mecca or the Grand Mufti – declared that the Shi’a were heretics, who were ‘worthy of death’.

There is considerable evidence that the Saudis were behind 9/11, and that the responsibility for the atrocity reached right up to the highest levels. And the current king’s intelligence chief also supported, armed and funded al-Qaeda terrorists and insurgents in Iraq and Syria, not to mention Daesh before they turned on the Saudis themselves, and urged the faithful there to rise up and overthrow the monarchy.

I am as concerned about the acquisition of nuclear technology by Saudi Arabia as I am about its development by Iran. In fact more so, as I think the Iranians were genuine when they said they wanted to develop nuclear power, rather than nuclear weaponry. And if they were to develop nuclear weapons, then it might be simply to protect themselves from American and Saudi attack and invasion.

I am also reminded here of another country that illegally developed nuclear weapons in the Middle East: Israel. They weren’t, and still aren’t, supposed to have them. But the world has turned a blind eye, and the whistleblower there, Mordechai Vanunu, was arrested and has spent something like 17 years in jail. Presumably you’re a horrible anti-Semite if you raise concerns about the Israelis’ possession of a nuclear capability.

Trump should not be passing on nuclear secrets to Saudi Arabia. If this is true, then this threatens further nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, and increases the possibility of an atomic conflict. A horrendous possibility, that could lead to the absolute destruction of all life on our already imperiled, beautiful world.

Get this madman and the other Republican maniacs out of the White House!